Personal Variables, Knowledge and Disposition to Peace Education Concepts among Junior Secondary School Social Studies Teachers in Ogun State, Nigeria

Abstract

Peace education has become a means of catching them young to minimize the spirit of intolerance that engenders conflict all over the world. This paper attempted to investigate the correlation between the knowledge, preference and attitude/disposition of JSS social studies teachers towards peace education concepts/themes in JSS social studies curriculum. Using the percentages, ranking and Pearson chisquare method of analysis; it was discovered that only 41.4% of the teachers believed that peace education is about promoting a culture of tolerance and give-and-take and 20.7% equally believed that cooperative learning is a most suitable method of teaching peace education. Furthermore, both the professional and non-professional teachers (X²=5.957, P>0.05) believed that peace education can promote unity in diversity in Nigeria. Gender (sex) factor equally accounted for the believe of the teachers in ‘catching them young’ for peace education (6.193, P>0.05). While across different teaching experience, the teachers were in agreement that peace education may not overload the JSS social studies curriculum (12.080, P>0.05), they all equally agreed (9.488, P>0.05) that peace education skills require additional training for social studies teachers. In ranking however, the concept of ‘tolerance’ was ranked first ‘cooperation’ second and ‘rule of law’ third as preferences for the teaching of peace education. It was therefore recommended that all the current JSS social studies teachers teaching in Ogun State, Nigeria needs post-qualification training (with more emphasis on the use of cooperative learning strategies) for effective teaching of peace education in schools.

Keywords: Personal Variables, Peace Education Concepts,  Social Studies Teachers